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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6573547" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Sounds good.  Lets take a look.Going to put these three together as they are so intimately intertwined.I am somewhat agnostic on this issue having only playtested the final product perhaps 6 hours (which spans 2.5 adventuring days worth of play).  However, I think I feel educated enough from that experience, general understanding, and past experience with AD&D and 3.x to extrapolate a meek/immature position.Asymmetric resource suites + bottom up (adventuring day) rather than top down (encounter) balance focus (and the inevitable margin of error associated with it) + the return of the volatile CR system (in a game where primary antagonism is only going to be onscreen for 3ish rounds yet may possess all manner of or 0 daily/nova capability) just makes me terribly insecure as a GM.  I think what you see in that thread is what inevitably stems from it.  Even GMs who have a fair amount of experience are suffering from lack of precision (and therefore predictability) on the Cakewalk < - > Balanced < - > TPK continuum.  Hence the illusionism that is coming out of it...and the inevitable advocating for the technique as if it is a virtue and "all good GMs do it when it is called for...for the sake of player fun and/or story."  As if there is no alternative in system or in GMing.Definitely agree.I have to leave in just a few minutes so I'm not going to be able to go over the rest of your post.  However, I think I agree with all of the rest of it.  Let me just talk about this one a bit (as we've discussed this before).So I've said before that noncombat conflict resolution seems to be a mash-up of AD&D NWPs and the 13th Age Background system.  The GMing advice is sort of a mash-up of those two.  Objectie, process-sim based DCs + fail forward/drama-based advice on resolution.However, the 13th Age system for NCCR (while I find it somewhat lacking) is infinitely better due to its coherency and transparency.  13th Age's NCCR system is all-drama based and there is no mistaking it.  You have:a)  Subjective, drama-based DCs.b)  Fail-forward advice that is basically saying success is like a 10 + in DW while failure is ALWAYS (this is key) a 7-9 in DW; success with complications/setbacks.  This, of course, is also drama-based.c)  Finally, you have the "Telegraphing Intent" section so that you and the GM are both locked in on precisely what you're looking for and precisely "what you're putting up" (stakes) so if a "fail forward" result needs rendering, you're on the same page.Unfortunately, it doesn't go the extra mile of DW's advice and give the GM a precise, thematic playbook for dealing with 7-9 (fail forward in 13th Age) results.  But it did well enough.Now 5e?  5e is all over the map.  (A) above is upturned entirely as the DCs are set to model process.  (B) tells the GM to SOMETIMES render the fiction based on the dramatic need of the moment (fail forward)...but it doesn't tell you when...and it doesn't tell you how.  So sometimes the result is supposed to be akin to the 7-9 in DW and sometimes the 6-.  But again...when and when not?  Is the player supposed to have a say when the dramatic need is RIGHT FRIGGING NOW?  Doesn't seem so.  How does the player have any idea when it is going to happen?  And what if they disagree on when the dramatic need has arisen?  And then there absolutely 0 canvassing (eg no DW gamesmastering playbook) on the how for when you (arbitrarily?) decide that the dramatic need has arisen and you should fail forward (7-9) versus an outright punitive failure (6-).  As you point out (and we've both pointed out before), this is extremely fertile soil for sowing the seeds of illusionism.</blockquote>

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